Sens. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) and Rand Paul (R-Ky.) introduced a bill Wednesday designed to give relief to the nation's bloated prison system by offering judges leeway to consider sentences below the mandatory minimum for all federal crimes.

The bill, named the Justice Safety Valve Act, would expand a current provision in sentencing law, authorizing judges to hand down less harsh sentences if they determine doing so would not jeopardize public safety. Under current law, only certain nonviolent, low-level, first-time drug offenses are subject to sentencing below the federal mandatory minimum.

Both Leahy and Paul touted the measure as a key step toward reducing the federal prison population and shrinking the federal prison budget, which surged to over $6.8 billion in 2012.

“As a former prosecutor, I understand that criminals must be held accountable, and that long sentences are sometimes necessary to keep criminals off the street and deter those who would commit violent crimes,” Leahy said in a statement. "Our reliance on mandatory minimums has been a great mistake. I am not convinced it has reduced crime, but I am convinced it has imprisoned people, particularly non-violent offenders, for far longer than is just or beneficial. It is time for us to let judges go back to acting as judges and making decisions based on the individual facts before them. A one-size-fits-all approach to sentencing does not make us safer.”

Leahy has been a vocal proponent of sentencing reform. Earlier this year he called for the total abolition of federal and state mandatory minimum laws.

Paul released his own statement, criticizing mandatory minimums as counter to American principles.

“Our country’s mandatory minimum laws reflect a Washington-knows-best, one-size-fits-all approach, which undermines the Constitutional Separation of Powers, violates the our bedrock principle that people should be treated as individuals, and costs the taxpayers money without making them any safer," he said. "This bill is necessary to combat the explosion of new federal criminal laws, many of which carry new mandatory minimum penalties.”

Civil rights activists and fiscal conservatives have already banded together in support of the bipartisan effort.

In an op-ed in The Hill on Wednesday, Julie Stewart, founder and president of the Families Against Mandatory Minimums Foundation, and Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform, both hailed the Justice Safety Valve Act as a "common sense" measure that would save money and help ensure that the "time fits the crime in every criminal case." Their column offered some data on prison capacity and overcrowding:

According to a recent Congressional Research Service (CRS) report, the number of inmates under the Bureau of Prisons’ (BOP) jurisdiction has increased from approximately 25,000 in FY1980 to nearly 219,000 in FY2012. BOP prisons are operating at 38 percent over capacity, endangering the safety of guards and inmates alike. Last week, the Inspector General for the Department of Justice testified that it’s only going to get worse: the BOP projects system-wide crowding to exceed 45 percent over rated capacity through 2018.

Wade Henderson, president and CEO of The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, met the legislation with similar approval.

"Our justice system’s overreliance on mandatory minimum sentencing is a major reason our prison system incarcerates more people than any other industrialized nation in the world, a disproportionate number of whom are Black and Brown," he said in a statement. "In fact, our overcrowded prisons are almost entirely the result of the mass incarceration of nonviolent drug offenders, who make up nearly half of all federal offenders, not violent criminals."

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27 Reasons Why U.S. Shouldn't Lead War On Drugs

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Only 7 percent of Americans think the United States is winning the war on drugs, and few Americans are interested in throwing down more money to try to win, according to a Rasmussen Reports poll released in 2012.

Mexican authorities seized almost 70,000 weapons of U.S. origin from 2007 to 2011. In 2004, the U.S. Congress declined to renew a 10-year ban on the sale of assault weapons. They quickly became the guns of choice for Mexican drug cartels.
Some 60,000 people have died in Mexico since President Felipe Calderón launched a military assault on the cartels in 2006.

Americans have the highest rate of illegal drug consumption in the world, according to the National Survey on Drug Use and Health.

Several current and former Latin American presidents, like Fernando Henrique Cardoso, have urged the United States to rethink its failed war on drugs, to no avail.

In an attempt to track guns as they moved across the U.S.-Mexico border, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms allowed smugglers to purchase weapons. The ATF lost track of the guns and they wound up in the hands of drug cartels -- even as far south as Colombia.

Though the subject of marijuana legalization regularly ranks among the most popular at the digital town halls President Obama takes part in, he declines to address the issue or give it a thoughtful answer.
Incidentally, a younger Obama supported marijuana decriminalization and a rethinking of the drug war.

Almost 800 prisoners accused of terrorism have have been held at the U.S. military prison of Guantánamo, Cuba, where they are detained indefinitely without facing trial. The United States has drawn international criticism from human rights defenders for subjecting the detainees there to torture and other cruel treatment. The Cuban government opposes hosting the U.S. naval base on its soil.

The United States has the world's largest prison population by far -- largely fed by the war on drugs -- at 500 per 100,000 people.

Because the United States imprisons roughly 400,000 immigrants each year on civil violations.

The U.S. Border Patrol has come under fire for killing minors who were throwing rocks.

When opponents of leftwing Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez briefly ousted him in 2002, the United States not only failed to condemn the coup, it praised the coup leaders.

When Colombia demobilized the largest rightwing paramilitary organization in 2006, if offered lenient sentences to those who would offer details on the atrocities the AUC committed. But rather than facing justice in their home country, Colombia has extradited several paramilitary leaders to the United States to face drug trafficking charges -- marking it harder for people like Bela Henríquez to find out the details surrounding the murders of their loved ones.
"More than anger, I feel powerless," Henriquez, whose father, Julio, was kidnapped and killed on the orders of one defendant, told ProPublica. "We don't know what they are negotiating, what conditions they are living under. What guarantee of justice do we have?"

The U.S funded the Guatemalan military during the 1960s and 1970s anti-insurgency war, despite awareness of widespread human rights violations. Among the recipients of U.S military funding and training were the Kaibiles, a special force unit responsible for several massacres. Former Kaibiles have joined the ranks of the Zetas drug cartel.

The rightwing military dictatorship that took over Argentina in 1976 "disappeared" some 30,000 people, according to estimates by several human rights organizations. They subjected countless others to sadistic forms of torture and stole dozens of babies from mothers they jailed and murdered. The military junta carried out the so-called "Dirty War" with the full knowledge and support of the Nixon administration.

When it became clear that socialist Salvador Allende would likely win the presidency in Chile, U.S. President Richard Nixon told the CIA to "make the economy scream" in order to "prevent Allende from coming to power or to unseat him," according to the National Security Archive.
Augusto Pinochet overthrew Allende in a bloody coup on Sept. 11, 1973, torturing and disappearing thousands of his political rivals with the backing of the U.S. government.

The Brazilian military overthrew the democratically elected government of João Goulart in 1964, with the enthusiastic support of President Lyndon Johnson, ushering in two decades of repressive government.

The Reagan administration funded the Contra rebels against the Marxist Sandinista government in Nicaragua. Regarded by many as terrorists, the Contras murdered, tortured and raped civilians. When human rights organizations reported on the crimes, the Reagan administration accused them of working on behalf of the Sandinistas.

Through Plan Colombia, the U.S. has pumped over $6 billion into Colombia's military and intelligence service since 2002. The intelligence service has been disbanded for spying on the Supreme Court and carrying out smear campaigns against the justices, as well as journalists, members of Congress and human rights activists. The military faces numerous allegations of human rights abuse, including the practice of killing non-combatants from poor neighborhoods and dressing them up as guerrillas to inflate enemy casualty statistics.

For 21 years, the U.N. has condemned the U.S. embargo against Cuba and for 21 years the United States has ignored it.
Some 188 nations voted against the embargo this year, with only the U.S. itself, Israel, Palau opposing.

At the behest of United Fruit Company, a U.S. corporation with extensive holdings in Central America, the CIA helped engineer the overthrow of the Guatemalan government in 1954, ushering in decades of civil war that resulted in the loss of hundreds of thousands of lives.

El Salvador's military committed atrocities throughout the 1980s with U.S. funding.

Woodrow Wilson ordered the Marines to invade and occupy Haiti in 1915 after the assassination of the Haitian president. The troops didn't leave until 1934.

One invasion wasn't good enough. The U.S. military returned in 1994.

The School of the Americas in Ft. Benning, Georgia, trained soldiers and generals responsible for massacres and torture of tens of thousands of Latin Americans, according to Al Jazeera.

The so-called "Spanish-American War" began in 1868 with the first of a series of three wars for Cuban independence. In 1898, the U.S. got involved, invading Cuba and occupying the island after forcing Spain to give it. The United States then forced Cuba to accept the odious Platt Amendent to its Constitution, which allowed the United States to intervene in the country militarily and established the U.S. military base at Guantánamo.

As long as you're invading Cuba, why not take Puerto Rico as well? The United States invaded in 1898 and the island remains a U.S. territory today.